CHAPTER IX THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS.
The Twelve Gods of All Nations CHAPTER IX I A NEW EXPLANATION OF THE ORIGIN OF GODS These twelve ARfiTES have a significant aspect worthy the attention of the analogist (I dare not say of the philosopher, since this term today passes as the exclusive property of solemn persons who will shrug their shoulders on hearing me invoke Him who nevertheless invented their fine name of "philosophers"). In the eyes of the poet, then, the greatest votary of analogy, although by pure instinct, in the eyes of the dreamer, does not each of these ARfiTES mark the limit of the violent expansion of one of the six efforts of which we are capable? Now this limit is imposed precisely by the expansion of one of the four adjoining efforts, to the first obstacle which causes it to deviate and brings it back obliquely to us. In reciprocally cutting each other off they form an ARfiTE; they become to one another the "thou shalt not," the imprescriptable law. There were, in the supreme Greco-Latin Olympus, but 12 great gods: Vesta, Juno, Neptune, Minerva, Venus, Apollo, Mercury, Jupiter, Ceres, Vulcan, Mars and Diana, to enumerate them in the order consecrated by their worship. And it was not only thus in the classic pantheon, but in India, where the 12 great gods bear the corresponding names of Maia, Indrani, Vishnu, Saracouati, Lakchmi, Indra, Boudha, Brahma, Gondopi, Ganeja, Siva and Bhavani, and preside respectively OVER THE SAME MONTHS OF THE YEAR; in Egypt, where they bear the names of Athor, Neith, Remfo, Bouto, Surot, Pi-re, Piromi, Pi-Zeous, T'Armouth, Fre, Ertosi, and Poubasti; in the Scandinavian Valhalla, where the Aesir are called Vora, Frigga, Niorder, Snorra, Freya, Balder, Loke, Thor, Freir, Heimdall, Oulloir and Gefiona; among the Japanese, who count 12 gods and demi-gods; among the ancient Persians, who divided the sombre and the bright months between the six Amschasfands and the six Devs, opposed face to face; in far-away Peru, in ancient Etruria, even in Tahiti, where today they still invoke Papiri, Ovnounou, Paroromoua, Paromori, Mouria, Heacha, Taoa, Hourororera, Houriama Teaire, Tetai, Ouehao, Ouea; and in the various Polynesian isles, in a word, among all polytheistic peoples. Why? Must we here see, with Dupuis, who enumerates the 12 Etruscan cantons, the 12 strategi, the 12 lictors, the 12 Arval Brethren, the 12 altars of Janus, the 12 columns of the temple of Heliopolis, the 12 palaces of the Labyrinth, the 12 gates of the Dodocapylon, those of the New Jerusalem in the APOCALYPSE, the 12 angels who guard them, the 12 foundations of the wall, according to St. John (Ap. XXI); the 12 branches of the candlestick, the 12 stones in the breastplate of the Jewish high priest (and, we might add, in the MIEN or head-dress of the Emperors of China); the 12 fountains of the desert, the 12 sacred cushions, the 12 stars of the dream of Joseph, the 12 TCHEOU or provinces of the Chinese Empire, etc., must we herein see, as he did, an eternal and monotonous commemoration of the signs of the zodiac? Ingenuous fancy of an astronomer! Humanity does not pass through life with its eyes glued to the nocturnal firmament, counting and annotating the constellations. And, when such an allegory has been mingled with the "signs" consecrated to these constellations, the Divine Figures have remained deprived of personality, whereas, in the imagination of races, nothing i$ more vivid than these Twelve Gods who everywhere loom sublime, smiling and awesome. Astarte, the Hindu Lakchmi, Venus of our Latin Occident, Aphrodite, Slavic Lada, Persian Enyo, Mexican Ichcouina, Celtic Roth, Finnish Sakamieli, Salammbo of Babylon, Scandinavian Siona, Saxon Magada, again Freia, Arabian Alzoarah, is it not, everywhere, the same ideal allurement which burns in our own hearts, and to which, even today, we make ceaseless allusion? Does not the sword of war everywhere sparkle in the hand of him whose name only changes: Mongol Daitching, Gaulish Hesus, Russian Lede, Ares, Mars, Saxon Pepenouth, Quirinus, Polynesian Rimarou, Ertosi the protector of Sesostris, Assyrian Nergal, Phoenician Baal-Thurz, Areskovi of the Hurons, Vitzlibochtli of Mexico, Hindu Skanda, Alemane of the Rhine, threeheaded Japanese Nequirou-Denichi-Maristin? Do not the thunders sound, in all climes, from the judicial throne of the same majestic Jupiter, Zeus, Indra, Celtic Taran, Arab Mochtara, Lamppic Oragalls, Esthonian Perkoun, Burman, Sigeann, Egyptian Pi-Zeous, Slavonic Peroun, Wotan, Ethiopian Assabine, Carthaginian Baal-Samen? And do we not find everywhere creeping in, artful and identical, Mercury, Hermes, Nebo, Piromi from the Nile, Quetzalcoatl from Mexico, Ogma of the Gauls, Eghouere the Parsee Dev, Etruscan Xudan, Germanic Jedod? From all lands resounds the hammer of the Irish Danan, who is Vulcan, who is Hephaestos, who is Sidek, who is Mimir, who is Ilmarenen in Finland, Luno in Norway, who is Siorlamh, who is Diamich, who is Vicouakarma. Just as everywhere flour, ishes Ceres, Rhea-Demeter, Fauna, Gondopi- Kouong-in pou-tsa in China, T'Armouth in Egypt, Schaka, Ops, full-breasted Copia, Dame Nature of our modern sentimentalists! In the heavens, Grann the Alsatian Apollo, Braga the Scandinavian, Abelios the Cretan, the lyric Phoibos, Mahanna of the Tahitians succeed, the same under a myriad names, to the identical Diana, Artemis, Pooh, pale beneath her black locks, or Selene, weaving her threads of silver over the nocturnal sea, the sea, from whose sinister depths rises the rebellious and greedy Poseidon, Ahriman, Satan, Jemma, Despot of the Japanese hells, Tuiston, the Gallo-German Pluto, Gouleho of the Friendly Islands, Houe-Koub of the Araucanians, Toia scorching his terrified adorers in Florida, the Hindu Kansa, Czernobog the dark god of the Varegues, Kronos, Scariafing of Formosa, the destroyer Akerouniamen of the ancient Umbrians, Gwaiotta of the Gouanches in Teneriffe, the Siamese Tevetat, envious rival of his brother the Buddha; Agnian, seated upon Brazilian tombs, Derevech of the Parsees, Maboia and Bouii in whom Caribs and Toungouses likewise have recognized the Devil; Sova in Guinea, Larthisca of the Moluccas, the vermiform Angat of Madagascar, Koupai the Peruvian, Atre the Angle-Saxon, Asuman, Nikken of the Danish isles, Usous in struggles with the hardy Phoenician vessels, Perdoit of the Prussian coast, Maguscan of the Carthaginians, Tsoui-Kouan foaming against Chinese prows, lebicon who defies the Japanese, Orre-orre before whom the Tahitian trembles in his log canoe, Mitg of Kamschatka, Teuaratai who separates the Polynesian isles. And at the hearth presides the pious Vesta, Anouke, Dehemeh, Metis, Voltumna standing amid the Etruscan councils, Conso in the Roman senate, Egeria the eternal guardian fairy, to whom stands in eternal antithesis the jealous Hera, Juno, Nemesis, the solar Malina of Greenland. We have considered above these Twelve Figures concentrated in six or seven types. One very striking point in these half-dozen visages is their PLETHORIC character. None of us can have failed to remark that there is a superabundance, an excess of expression in the gods as the Renaissance has painted them. In this respect the Jupiter of Rubens, of Cornelius Agrippa or of Marlowe goes far beyond that of Phidias or of Homer; he has too much of flesh and blood, of muscle, of self-consciousness. The same may be said of the too sturdy Venus of the moderns, who has come to be confused with the orgiac Demeter. Mars becomes Herculean, and the others fare likewise. Each of them, in fact, has within him the equivalent of a second god. And each of them, as we have observed, shows but the wild and unrestrained flight of our energy in one of the six directions which space opens to it. When our Twelve Figures definitely outlined themselves; when, driven by the spirit of analogy so powerful of old, they were imposed upon all things, successively established over all, over the provinces of the fatherland and over the countries of the earth; over the social classes and the successive generations of the past; over the virtues and the laws; over public powers and the organs of our bodies ; over our natural actions and our ceremonies ; over familiar and sacred objects, what more natural than that those men who sought also in the heavens for these types should likewise perceive them at the twelve almost equidistant points which divide the year? They placed the phlegmatics, such as Vesta, the vindictive Juno and the greedy Neptune in the months of winter; the youthful and smiling Venus, Minerva and Apollo in the months of spring; Mercury, Jupiter and Ceres in the summer affected by the sanguines, and, for their grim sincerity, Vulcan, Mars and Diana in the sombre autumn. Here, then, in my opinion, is all we need retain of the theory of Dupuis. To this astronomical localization, nevertheless, I find it legitimate to subordinate certain of the dozens grouped by him as examples, but certain ones only, and on condition, I repeat, that the astronomic localization be itself subordinated to the conception of a psychology infinitely more human and more profound. The origin of this conception is not exterior to man; it proceeds from our mental constitution itself, and is but ITS IMPRESSION IN BELIEF. In a word, there never have been, in religion, more than twelve great Gods clearly defined, for the very simple reason that no more could be created. For the rest, we may remark: If, in face of the astronomic system of Dupuis, other mythologists have been easily able to range the ETYMOLOGICAL system, in which every myth results from an EQUIVOQUE, a homonymy, a metaphor interpreted literally, an imperfection in the language, or finally from a sort of pun or play on words, if they have been able to win over to that theory the majority of old partisans of the former, they have nevertheless not destroyed it. For it still remains for them to explain in a satisfactory manner the numerical coincidences so surprising and so numerous.. . . Moreover, their new thesis, a trifle ignoble, it mu be admitted, was quite as quickly found wearisome and unsatisfying, and we have seen, in default of better solutions, many weak and at the same time curious minds led astray in the morass of occultism, while intellects more robust^ but repelled by the etymological doctrine, content themselves regretfully with the vague socalled PSYCHOLOGICAL doctrine. This affirms that myths are a natural creation of the human mind, and that the human mind ought naturally to create them, but without attempting to demonstrate either how or why! To those awakened minds which have never been satisfied with the somewhat feminine "because . . ."of this theory, the present analysis has furnished already an explanation of the analogies, twelve by twelve, so patiently ranged by Dupuis, and has not feared to further enrich them. It can furnish, in addition, the explanation of the etymological resemblances: they are not less interesting, although less numerous, it must be admitted, and especially less striking. It is not impossible to reduce the morphology of languages to a limited number of generative laws. These laws bear especially upon the essential and primitive words, notably on those which are connected with the fundamental idea of BEING: we know the unique importance of this verb among all others, in all languages. Now the idea of Being PAR EXCELLENCE is easily identified with that of "Supreme" or "Divine" Beings. We have just seen that, according to the etymological system, the mythic particularities which were attached to these various divine types resulted precisely in homonymies or involuntary "puns," in a lexical CONFUSION. Believers will be pleased to remark that this does not contradict the sacred legend. Without doubt, the etymologic system will readily date this confusion from the very origin of the human being. But it must be recognized that scientifically it is not permissible to go back to so remote an epoch. And we may recall that legend ascribes to the same historic moment the beginning of polytheisms and the difference of languages, which would thus have determined, and not followed, the dispersion of men, thenceforward incapable of understanding one another. I am here advancing, I need hardly say, only a hypothesis, barely sketched, but amusing. May I be permitted another remark? To accept the etymological system, according to which mythology is but a foolish "malady of language," is to accept the implicit conclusion that since the earliest ages (since the beginning, say the believers ; in any case, for a longer time than any other race) the one Chosen People has, despite the idioms so diverse and so pagan which it has successively adopted, maintained itself unscathed by this linguistic malady, and consequently by the mental malady which it engenders. Since this people created, or, according to its own humble avowal, providentially received and simply conserved this triumphal idea of the Unity of Being, how reconcile the assertions of the modern critic? Is language, then, not the cause nor mythology the effect? Or is this conception of the One Being more ancient among this people than is admitted? And is this primitive language of the Hebrews superior to others, since it alone remained free from the great "malady" which contaminated them all until the idea of Being was forced into a delirious flowering? Of this flowering, nevertheless so supremely beautiful, let us study the morphology in the light of our idea, which finally puts into accord the three mythologic systems. II HEROES, EPONYMS, TRIBES, FEDERATIONS, PATRIARCHS, PEERS, DISCIPLES, APOSTLES, PARTS OF THE MASS, ARTICLES OF THE CREED, STONES, TOTEMS, IDOLATRIES, HERESIES, SYSTEMS, SCHISMS AND NATIONALITIES. Man, as observed at the beginning of this book, is above all else DOUBLE. And this is very natural, if we reflect that he is the product of two beings. He is, then, above all, a contradiction, a dialogue, a duel. His pretended individuality, the absolute Self of the philosophers, remains as chimerical, as inconsistent as the mathematical point ; it has no more real existence than the point; it appears simply when two lines, two hereditary impulses, coincide. These lines at least present a continuity, a durable will. Now, in pursuing the same geometric comparison, is not a line found at the meeting of two surfaces, is it not an ARETE? Thus symbolically the human figure presents itself before us. ... The twelve Divine Figures reveal themselves as the very incarnations of the TWELVE CONTRADICTIONS produced bwtween the six directions of energy. Thus they correspond to man: the twelve human-types, the twelve eternal ancestors. He may meet them, recognize them, evoke them on all his paths. Not in the heavens alone, but in the past he finds them, at first in the legendary period of eponyms, then in authentic history, whose heroes, simplified in memory, he has obstinately identified with one of these twelve types. Here, then, is the explanation of the fourth and last mythologic system, EUHEMERISM. Yes, the heroes of humanity pass, after death, to the state of divinities. But the divine roles which are attributed to them were ready in advance; the roles existed before the actors, for these were not the authors; they did naught but enter and shape themselves, as they could well do, to a mould already constructed. The type of Jupiter existed before the most ancient of mortal Jupiters, and from each of them has been accepted only what was appropriate to the type, only what in each was Jupiterian. Thus may be explained the multiplicity of heroes blended in a single legend, with nevertheless an admirable unity of poetic tone (Hercules, Buddha, etc.). Do we not, moreover, assist in this work? are not words and sayings thus transferred from one celebrated man to another? We may verify this by Voltaire, for example, who inherited, for the most part, from English authors his biting sallies of wit, to which have been added others, imagined since his death. Napoleon, despite his square jaw and his plebeianism, must needs be a Caesar of triangular and aquiline visage; Caesar in turn an Alexander, Alexander a Sesostris, a Rama. A gocl, an individual-type, is then an ARETE, a dialogue, one of those primitive combinations such as we encounter at our first step in descending to the interior of the human soul. And this probably explains why, of the 12 inevitable gods, there are so often 6 masculine and 6 feminine, as if through need to express, by means of the one, the victory of the paternal (or vital) principle, and by means of the other, that of maternal principle in our individual-type. By the milogynism of the pre-Manichaean pessimists, duality was expressed by GOOD and BAD demons, amschasfands and devs of Iranian origin, rather than by sexual antitheses. The Japanese SUPERPOSED six gods and six demigods. In the pure intellectuality of the Judaic-Christian religion, sex is effaced, and between the twelve personages there is no more than the tie of brotherhood, natural or spiritual: the twelve tribes of Israel descend from twelve patriarchs, sons of Jacob, and the Christ expressly says to his apostles: "Ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." (Matt. XIX, 28).* So we should not be surprised to find this obsessing number 12 at the base of most social groupings ; it is a natural result, psychological and inevitable, and has nothing to do with this or that astronomical conception, mystic and artificial. It is not only the 12 Jewish tribes and the 12 Etruscan, the 12 tribes of the Platonic Republic, the 12 confederated towns of Ionia, those of JEolia, those of the Achaian League, or the 12 burghs of Athens which may be cited, but, if we will, in the two most vigorous republican efforts of modern times, the 13 cantons which first formed and for many centuries constituted Switzerland, or the 13 original United States: the number 13 being to the number 12, psychologically, what 7 is to 6, its centralization around a dominating unity. Likewise it is sometimes 12 equal comrades, and sometimes these accompanied by their chief (comparable to Joseph, Jesus, etc.) whom we find in all the orders of chivalry, from the famous Peers of Charlemagne (Roland, Oliver, Turpin, Estoult, Haton, Gerin, Gorier, Samson, Girart, Anseis, Berangier, Hue, according to the generally accepted list) to the order of the DAME DE L'ECU VERT founded by Bouciquat (he and his brother Geoffrey, Charles d'Albret, chief of the order, Gaucourt, Bonnebaut, Torsay, B6tas, Colleville, Chateaumorant, d'Aubissecourt, Castelbayac, Chambrillac, LignieYes) in conformity with the plan given by Philippe de Mezidres for his ideal Chivalry of the Passion, in which, about the "Prince," were grouped the Constable, the Chancellor, the Marshal, the Admiral, the Treasurer, the Procurator, the Provisor, the Advocate, the Moderator, the Justiciar and the two Consuls. Confucius had 12 disciples. If the Jews enumerated 4 Great Prophets (Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah and Daniel), they added to them the 12 Lesser Prophets Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, just as the Christians connect the Acts of the Apostles with the writings of the 4 Evangelists. The 4 sacred figures (the Angel, the Lion, the Calf and the Eagle) which accompany these last, accompanied the 4 Great Prophets. They accompany in turn the 4 Fathers of the Greek Church (Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen and John Chrysostom) and those of the Roman (Jerome, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Ambrose) connected with the 12 great classic Doctors (the same, plus Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Francis de Sales, Alphonse de Liguori, Hilaire, Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard and Peter Damien). We may recall the care with which Jevohah disposes the 12 tribes in 4 groups, according to the 4 cardinal points. "On the east the camp of Judah . . . next unto him the tribe of Issachar then the tribe of Zebulon ... on the south the camp of Reuben. . . and by him the tribe of Simeon . then the tribe of Gad ... on the west the camp of Ephraim . . . and by him the tribe of Manasseh . . . then the tribe of Benjamin . . . the camp of Dan on the north . . . and by him the tribe of Asher . . . then the tribe of Naphtali . they shall go hindmost with their standards." (Numbers II, 3-31.) And in fact we see always the tribes defile in the same order. Need we recall here the 12 parts composing the Mass, which celebrates the Passion, itself the resume and center of history? These are: the INTRODUCTION between the preparation of the faithful and the Confession, the Introit or ENTRANCE OF THE CHOIR with the litany and the "gloria," the EPISTLE flanked by the collect and the psalmodies, the GOSPEL of the day with the homily, the CREDO, the OFFERTORY, the secret prayer and the PREFACE, the canon and the solemn ELEVATION, the PATER, the FRACTION and the "agnus," the COMMUNION, lastly the graces, the BENEDICTION and the gospel of St. John. I have already noted the senary subdivision of the Mass. I have indicated also how each of the 6 days or periods of Genesis is divided into two antithetic creations. And it is interesting to observe that geology reckons, in the history of our globe, 12 upheavals before the appearance of man. Now the same poetic tradition which, in the representations of the Apostles, places on the forehead of each one of the 12 precious stones (attributed also to the 12 Patriarchs), and figuring likewise in the Jewish high priest's breastplate and in the foundations of the columns of the New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse) the same tradition which gives to Andrew the sapphire (of Naphtali), to Peter the jasper (of Gad), to James the chalcedony (the carbuncle of Dan), to James the Less the yellow topaz (of Simeon), to Matthew the green peridot (of Ephraim), to Jude the chrysoprase (of Issachar), to gentle John the emerald (of Judah), to zealous Simon the hyacinth (or ligure of Asher), to Matthias the purple amethyst (of Zebulon), to Thomas the aquamarine or beryl (of Benjamin), to Bartholomew the carnelian (of Reuben), and to Philip the orange sardonyx (of Manasseh) wrote also at their feet the 12 articles of the CREED which has transformed human thought and has served as its basis for twenty centuries. "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth," said the prince of the Apostles. "And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord," continued Andrew. "Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary," affirmed James. "Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried," testified John. "Descended into hell," recalled Philip. "The third day he rose from the dead," declared the majestic Bartholomew. "He ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty," proclaimed Matthew. "From whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead," prophesied Thomas. "I believe in the Holy Ghost," resumed the pious James the Less, cousin and counterpart of Christ. "The Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints," confessed Jude. "The forgiveness of sins," added Simon. "The resurrection of the body and life everlasting," concluded Matthias. Thus tradition* has it that they announced in unforgettable terms the dogmas of the CREED, before dispersing, three toward each cardinal point, as we have already remarked: westward, John (Ephesus and the Greek world), Peter (Rome), and James (Spain); southward, James the Less (Jerusalem), Simon (Egypt) and Matthew (the vast Ethiopia of the black races); eastward, Jude (Persia), Bartholomew (India) and Thomas (Major India and the Extreme Orient); northward, Philip (Cappadocia, Asia Minor), Matthias (Colchis, the Caucasus) and Andrew (Scythia and the barbarian lands of the north). A generation later their work is almost everywhere historically visible, and the world is shaken by it. Now, since the Apostles Creed in its 12 articles summarizes the Faith, every heresy must consist of an attack upon at least one of these articles, and the heresies may thus be distributed upon the same duodenary plan. Furthermore, the idolatries, according to sacred teaching, were but primitive heresies, indurated. "Twelve gates give access to Heaven, for the people of various religions," said the Brahmins. The bad habits, the attitudes of mind which the idolatries fixed, the mental vices on which they lived, degenerated sometimes into fetichism, or into the animalism whose totems, like the god-types, are everywhere found to be almost the same (wolf, lion, dog, bull, etc.) be it on many altars, the Egyptian among others (whence the Golden Calf perhaps emigrated with the Exodus), be it even, an unconscious reminiscence, in the blazon of heraldry or among the gracious allegories of the fabulists, to be one day summed up so well in the dozen types of REYNARD: Noble the lion, Reynard the fox, Bruin the bear, Isegrim the wolf, Tybert the cat, Grimbert the badger, Morhou the dog, Kyward the hare, Baldwin the ass, Chantecler the cock, the Monkey and Beaucent the boar. Not only may we thus lay out a world-map of the heresies, idolatries and aberrations of the Faith, but has not the great Varro, according to St. Augustine in THE CITY OF GOD, classed the philosophies (those indispensable crowns of the antique idolatries as of the modern heresies), in observing their most characteristic effort, the conception of the Sovereign Good, in 12 principal ideas, from which come, as he demonstrated, the 288 possible systems, and to which yet turn, it must be admitted, all our actual theories. The Intoxication of Life, Contemplative Repose, or the two reconciled in Epicurean voluptuousness, or all three finally augmented by the Primordial Blessings of Nature (health of body and mind) are alternately the objects of inquiry, either direct or by means of virtue, or simply for the sake of the research itself. To one contemplating history from a detached point of view, the nationalities are revealed as simple links of that more general and durable chain, a religion. This is clearly visible in Greece. It is not less visible throughout Europe. And Schism appears as the first effort, the first fissure of that separatism provoked by the weight of despotism, by the tyrannic ambition of a new power. Its ideal, if it preserves one, in religion, must be totally different, and tends consequently toward one of the types which we have enumerated : every nationalism (Judaism, Anglicanism, Gallicanism), ends in a rudiment of idolatry, in some sort of distortion of the great complete which is to say divine human Type. And it is interesting to grasp here the incompatibility of Church and Tyranny or, according to our phrase, Church and State. It is, moreover, much less the heresy or schism which captures the interest of the really profound historian than the manifestation of the dogma which they prepare, which they necessitate: the FILIOQUB provoked by the quibbles of the Byzantine schism, this is the "fiat lux" of the Occident; the Council of Trent, this is the Catholic Shakespeare. Ill GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY But, whether already separated or not, each State remains none the less a member of a group of a dozen equals. In connection with the Church (our "Vesta"), can we not observe that from the moment when we let Poland disappear, our France, its equilibrium changed at a blow, saw her hegemony pass to England, whose role was at the same time inherited by the United States: of this dozen of civilized nations, Germany increased her strength by all the power vainly wrested by us from the house of Austria; Russia, the Scandinavian world and the Low Countries counterbalanced each other; Spain descended a little lower, Italy rose as much higher. And perhaps it is because Turkey is being effaced that Japan, an element likewise foreign, now rises upon our horizon. Most of these States are composed of two elements primitively hostile, comparable to the two planes whose intersection forms the lines of an ARfiTE. For it is one of the gross errors of our time to identify RACE and NATION. A nation, a state, seems, on the contrary, to have no other mission than to unite and bind opposed races, with a view to some human combination as yet unknown; to attempt to limit a nation to one race would be as foolish as to limit one family to incestuous unions. Anglo-Saxons and Celts on the island of Great Britain, northern French and Albigenses, Germans of north and south, Austrians and Hungarians, and for a long period Swedes and Norwegians, their new divorce perhaps the precursor of other separations in Europe, illustrate my assertion. Moreover, each one among these couples formed not a unity but a dozen, when it existed independently. We can still find in the real France (the North) the types, so distinct in features, language and arts, curiously grouped by antitheses, of the Breton and the Norman, the Fleming and the Champenois, the native of the Ile-de-France and the heavy Beauceron, the artistic Limousin and the Auvergnat, the nonchalant Touranian and the Poitevin, the Lorrain and the Burgundian. In that one of the two dozens which, in any country, shows itself morally superior to the other, we can discover a national subdivision into two half-dozens: Scotland and Ireland, Asiatic Greece and Morea, Gascony and the Rhone valley, etc. Let us go further: tradition, yet living, divides each one of these 12 regions among 12 little peoples in turn. And one could go on thus into every country, into every one of its natural provinces. Imperial Italy, it is true, was divided into ten provinces only, but because its administration failed to join to it the two halves, so characteristic, of Cisalpine Gaul. These 12 divisions survive in the ethnic physiognomies, so clearly cut, of the modern Italians. There were 12 kingdoms in Spain: Old Castile, New Castile, Leon, Galicia, Navarre, Aragon, Murcia, Jaen, Cordova, Seville, Granada and Valencia. Germany comprises two dozen states, Sweden 24 LANS, etc. From another point of view: is not the government of a country formed of a dozen ministers? Worship (Vesta), Finance (Juno), Marine, (Neptune), diplomatic Foreign Affairs (Minerva), the Interior with hygiene, police and . . . charity (Venus), Public Instruction with the fine arts (Apollo), Commerce and Mails (Mercury), Justice (Jupiter), Agriculture (Ceres), Public Works (Vulcan), War (Mars) and the Colonies with their wild and virgin lands (Diana). And, very recently, Labor, which has mysteriously replaced the first. Each of the 4 great Races which cover the globe, the choleric and ambitious White, the sanguine and careless Black the phlegmatic Yellow and the melancholy Red or Brown so widely scattered, throws out three important branches. We have seen how the EUROPEAN branch of the White Race ramifies into one dozen great peoples, of whom the smaller peoples are the detached branches. We may see the same in the case of the SEMITES, and of the NON-SEMITES remaining in Asia (Hindus, Persians, etc.), whom, in my opinion, we are too much inclined to connect with the European, for they are equal to it in numbers, and differ from it in mind, physiognomy and arts not less than the Arab. Finally, geographically, if we divide the world longitudinally into three slices, beginning from about 25 West, we obtain the three actual worlds: the OCCIDENTAL, between the EXTREME ORIENTAL (from 90 East to 150 West) and the American (from 150 West to 25 West). Or, if you prefer to cut the world into four slices, very well, you will have: for the first (25 W. to 65 E.) our HISTORIC WORLD; then eastward (to 155) the Orient, Hindu, Japanese, Chinese, Malayan; therefrom to 115 W., the mysterious Pacific whose isles appear here and there like the last remaining columns of a destroyed temple; and finally, America. Over these four quarters of the earth are reigning each moment the four parts of the day, in such a way that, if we wish, we may subdivide it into 24 parts, like the face of a clock. Each twelfth of this longitudinal clock each couple of hours means a civilization. To gratify Japan, we call her the Empire of the Rising Sun, whose light announces a vernal day; while the day breaks, calm morning has dawned over Korea, the laborious day has commenced for New Zealand ; when it is but half past nine in smiling Tahiti the first quarter of the day is already ending in the Far West. Two o'clock, three o'clock, moment of the siesta, sound over the ancient colonies, those which threw off the yoke of England in the 18th century and the lighter yoke of Spain in the 19th. It is four o'clock in pensive Brazil and six on the Atlantic. Our western Europe is contemplating the sunset, eight o'clock already ! Twilight is enveloping Germany and the Angelus is sounding in Rome. Night is closing over Greece, over Egypt and Judea; it is ten and eleven o'clock in Arabia and Chaldea. Midnight sounds in the land of Ahriman and Tamerlane! The rest of the night possesses, the first two hours India and Thibet, and the hours before dawn Annam and China. Need we remind ourselves that to each of these couples of hours the spirit of analogy attached a sign of the zodiac, with the god placed over it by the ancient Greeks, Hindus, etc.? Thus, space and time being united, let us now recall those Centuries whose evolution we compared, four by four, to that of the seasons. Each of these centuries producing three generations, a generation relates itself, in the mind of the dreamer, to a Month, as, on the above longitudinal clock, to a Two-hour Period and to the civilizations which we have just seen marked out by them, or to a pair of Homeric cantos, etc. It relates itself likewise to one of the 12 great Gods. And the verifications of this, in our own annals, is curious. We know that our great national dynasty of the Capetians connected itself with Charlemagne, glory of the preceding, by his cousin-german Nebelong, grandfather of Robert-le-Fort. Twelve generations later is attained its own supreme glory in Saint Louis; another twelve generations, and it produced the splendid Louis XIV. It is pleasing to find, in connection with each of these great men, the same importance accorded to the mother, whether Bertha Broad-foot, Blanche of Castile or Anne of Austria. Pepin de Landen and Saint Arnulf were the two pillars of that dynasty. The scrupulous piety which caused both to be beatified characterized, 36 generations later (3 x 12) the comte de Chambord, and, in the interval, it bent the knees, for a moment rebellious, of Philippe I, and surged beneath the shining armor of St. Jeanne d'Arc. It is, in short, the generation of Vesta. Louis XI and Louis XIV belong, in two different branches, to a like generation: they have (from Juno) the spirit of chicanery which, 12 generations earlier, showed itself so plainly in their not less popular ancestor Louis-le-Gros. Ambition to the point of imprudence is shown in three branches of the family, also in a like generation, by Charles VIII, Francis I and Antoine de Bourbon, repeating thus the moral physiognomy of Louis-le-Jeune and Pepin d'Heristal. Likewise a Henri IV, eloquent and ingenious (Minerva), repeats at 12 generations' distance f almost trait for trait, the Ulyssean type of Philippe- Auguste. After this, one will hardly be surprised to meet, in the generations consecrated to the orgiac Ceres, the scandals of the TOUR DE NESLE and those of the PARC AUX CERFS, nor to see the weakness (Diana) of this family drag it down with the foolish Charles VI, and, 12 generations later, with Louis XVII, with the Due de Berry and Ferdinand d'Orleans. Was it for want of a Duguesclin (Mars), we ask, that Louis XVI, at least as worthy the name of "Sage" as his corresponding duodenaire Charles V, found himself overwhelmed by a militarist generation? a generation which, deluded by a duodecimal remembrance, thought it found in Marie-Antoinette of Austria another Isabel of Bavaria, and in the Comte d'Artois a Charles d'Orleans, and whose first achievement as soon as it came into power, was the inauguration of twenty-five years of senseless wars. Thus was the way opened for Napoleon, who lacked the control of a suzerain and moderate advisor, whose wisdom might have avoided for us the final Waterloo. Another possibility: if the honest but weak Henri V was unable to reclaim his throne, or Napoleon III to maintain himself upon his, was it through lack of a rhythm remaining sufficiently vibrant in the exhausted race of the former, or of a rhythm sufficiently well established in the upstart race of the latter, and because the qualities of the two could not be united in a single man capable of responding to the imperious appeal of the new dogmas proclaimed by Pius IX? What history needs, as vertebral column, is a duly organized science of Comparative Heredity. Of this science we possess the documents, marvelously in order, in the genealogies of the great families. We have only to note the laws. Now a law does not exist in itself. A law simply establishes the more or less frequent return of an analogous association between phenomena, and of these phenomena it terms the more ancient the CAUSE and the more recent the EFFECT.* The return which permits it to verify once more this association, this succession, what is it but Rhythm? Thus it is the mission of the scholar to ascertain rhythms. All life is movement; all movement is observed from the point of view of a relative immobility, of a repetition, of an identity rediscovered here and there in the moving stream. From these rhythms to be studied in history, I have selected the most obvious, as well as the most disquieting. What is this strange duodenary rhythm, the only common dividend of 2, 3 and 4, which we have felt vibrating, beat by beat, through heredity, through the history of a people, through that of humanity entire, in the roles which the various races of the world have seized upon simultaneously or have bequeathed to one another, in the flight of the hours which sound over their sleep or their activity, in the dance of the seasons and the months, in that of the years of our lives, in that of generations and centuries, in the division of public powers, in the equilibrium of Europe, in that of the world, in that of each nation, of each of its cities, in the philosophic systems of various peoples, in the heresies which rend religious faith , in the articles of its Creed, in the ceremonies of worship, in song, in the poetic metres of all literatures, in the composition of the greatest poems, in the conflicts of the drama and in legendary cycles, in the idolatries, in the series of gods, into which are absorbed, and among which are ranged, one after another, prophets, apostles, eponyms, animals of the fables, and heroes of fairy tales, even the popular heroes acclaimed by our contemporaries? And still I have not detailed the 12 terrains which geologists discover between the central and unknown regions of Earth and the simple "alluvions" of its epidermis, nor the dozen upheavals which have moulded it ! Nor the 12 solid elements found in a free state in nature (antimony, sulphur, arsenic, platinum, copper, gold, mercury, bismuth, tellure, carbon, iron, silver). Nor the 3x4 embranchments which Delafosse, Linne and Cuvier count in nature, nor the 2 x 12 classes which Cuvier enumerates for the animal kingdom, nor the general tendency of all these "orders" toward multiples of the same number 12. What is it, this strange, obsessing rhythm? It is the rhythm of Life. Hear it beating in your own heart, in your arteries, in your nerves What we have done for the Temperaments and the Seasons, in drawing the innumerable analogies which they suggest, what we have done for the six directions in which our energies, born of the explosive binary combinations of temperaments, can dart over the three dimensions of space, what we have begun for the twelve ARfiTES or god-types recognized in all religions and all social groupings, we have but to study more and more deeply, in descending, step by step, into the mysteries of the human heart, by means of patient comparison of the secondary types which will be successively engendered before us, carefully distinguishing them one from another in their most intimate details. The task is infinite, and I do not pretend to have completed it, but at least we shall lay hold upon realities not heretofore grasped, thanks to the classification now to be opened, the first attempted classification, I believe, of the unnumbered Characters which, whether real or imaginary, obsess the divers peoples of the earth.